Page 149 - les-miserables

Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty. The terms of the
Code were explicit. There occur formidable hours in our
civilization; there are moments when the penal laws de-
cree a shipwreck. What an ominous minute is that in which
society draws back and consummates the irreparable aban-
donment of a sentient being! Jean Valjean was condemned
to five years in the galleys.
On the 22d of April, 1796, the victory of Montenotte,
won by the general-in-chief of the army of Italy, whom the
message of the Directory to the Five Hundred, of the 2d of
Floreal, year IV., calls Buona-Parte, was announced in Par-
is; on that same day a great gang of galley-slaves was put in
chains at Bicetre. Jean Valjean formed a part of that gang.
An old turnkey of the prison, who is now nearly eighty years
old, still recalls perfectly that unfortunate wretch who was
chained to the end of the fourth line, in the north angle of
the courtyard. He was seated on the ground like the others.
He did not seem to comprehend his position, except that it
was horrible. It is probable that he, also, was disentangling
from amid the vague ideas of a poor man, ignorant of every-
thing, something excessive. While the bolt of his iron collar
was being riveted behind his head with heavy blows from
the hammer, he wept, his tears stifled him, they impeded
his speech; he only managed to say from time to time, ‘I was
a tree-pruner at Faverolles.’ Then still sobbing, he raised his
right hand and lowered it gradually seven times, as though
he were touching in succession seven heads of unequal
heights, and from this gesture it was divined that the thing
which he had done, whatever it was, he had done for the

149